09 April 2014 3:40 PM

Further Thoughts on the Irish Question

I’m asked why it was all right for the Queen to visit memorials to Irish rebels in Dublin, but wrong for her to have Martin McGuinness at Windsor Castle. I’m also told that her visit to Dublin would have been impossible without the 1998 surrender. These are good points to which the answers must remain matters of opinion and contention.

But my responses are these . The two conflicts, from 1916 until 1921 and from 1969 to 1998 (its official end, though in fact it continues) , are very different. It is true that, in bald terms, the British government was entitled to use considerable force to repress the Easter 1916 rising in Dublin, coming (as it did) at the height of the Great War, and being (as it was) aided and abetted by Imperial Germany.

I have often stated here that legitimate authority is entitled to use violence to defend itself against violent attack, and that is why I am so suspicious of the term ‘killing his own people’, used of a ruler who is said to have lost his right to rule by doing so. This means that any rebellion merely has to provoke the government into the use of lethal violence, and ‘ world opinion’ will then condemn that government as too barbaric to stay in power, and begin calling it a ‘regime’.

As the Irish government which took over after the 1921 Treaty swiftly found, it could not have long survived had it not ‘killed its own people’ in quite large numbers. And the emergency measures taken in the late 1930 and early 1940s by the De Valera state against its IRA enemies were extremely ruthless, and pretty much put paid to IRA activity in the Free State from then on (I am told there have been one or two small exceptions. I don’t doubt it). The point is that the Dublin state, by legitimate force, repressed a violent threat to its internal sovereignty.

Why was that state legitimate? Because, in the 1921 Treaty, the British government, formerly the sovereign power, handed over that power to the new Free State, and to the Republic which succeeded it, by incremental steps asserting greater and greater independence from the British Crown until the formal departure from the Commonwealth in 1948-9. Interestingly, on that day, King George VI sent the following message to Sean O’Kelly, then President of the Republic of Ireland : ‘I send you my sincere good wishes on this day, being well aware of the neighbourly links which hold the people of the Republic of Ireland in close association with my subjects of the United Kingdom. I hold in most grateful memory the services and sacrifices of the men and women of your country who rendered gallant assistance to our cause in the recent war and who made a notable contribution to our victories. I pray that every blessing may be with you today and in the future.’, which seems quite a pleasant, good-natured farewell to me.

It was followed by swift legislation cementing the absolute right of Irish men and women to live, work and vote anywhere in the UK, which was hardly an act of spite. And of course the mysterious an elusive ‘common travel area’ by which one is supposed to be able to travel between the two countries without a passport (though in my own personal experience arrivals from London at Dublin airport cannot rely on this being the case any more, though it still seems to work the other way round).

Before and since, the official name of the country whose capital is Dublin ( or Baile atha Cliath for those who think that Peking is called ‘Beijing’ and Kiev ‘Kyiv’) has been a point of contention between London and Dublin, Britain always having been unwilling to use the name ‘Ireland’ because that would imply Dublin sovereignty over the whole island of Ireland, as claimed in the 1937 constitution and now sort of not claimed any more. So we have said either ‘Eire’, in Free State days, or ‘The Republic of Ireland’ since then.

It’s the sort of thing only detail-hunters such as I would notice, but I enjoyed the gentle teasing implied, in a speech whose spirit was rather fine. I particularly treasured the quotation I had not heard before, from someone I am ashamed not to have heard of before, Tom Kettle : ’Free, we are free to be your friend’.

You’ll find similar enjoyable little tweaks of the British nose in the new series of Irish ordnance survey maps, jointly numbered in an act of wise co-operaton, which have (inevitably) an overlap which causes parts of the Republic to be included in ‘Northern’ maps, and parts of the ‘North’ to be included in ‘Southern’ maps (memo to pedants, yes, I do know that Donegal lies to the North of the Six Counties, that Ulster has nine counties etc etc etc). There are some interesting contortions in the Republic's maps, to avoid dwelling more than is strictly necessary on the existence of Northern Ireland, but without having one to hand I can’t recall them for sure. I believe it is possible for a very patriotic citizen of the Republic to avoid using a Northern Map at all, for the South takes care to have maps covering every inch of its territory, even if they duplicate large swathes of the Northern ones. I’m not absolutely sure it works the other way. I think it’s possible that a militant Protestant ‘loyalist’ might just have to use what he’d call a Fenian map.

Anyway, the point about the 1916-22 conflict was that it was largely based on a very bad mistake by us, Britain - the executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising. It was perfectly reasonable (and mostly applauded by Dubliners) that we put down the rising itself with all necessary force. But the executions were (as Talleyrand said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duc D’Enghien in 1804) ‘ worse than a crime. They were a mistake’.

Patriotic Irish men and women, from that moment, could envisage no future under the British Crown. They felt that they had been treated as enemies. They regarded many of the executed men (with reason) as innocent or victims of vindictive fury. All that followed, in my opinion, up to the atrocities of the Auxiliaries and the disgraceful massacre at Croke Park, was a product of that mistake.

I think it was the descendants of those gentle, honourable Irish patriots who quietly took down their portraits of the King in May 1916, who were won over to a new friendship by the visit of his granddaughter 95 years later. And I think that, by visiting the sites she visited, she made it plain that this was what she intended. So it seemed to me, anyway.

Martin McGuinness represents a strand of militant republicanism far beyond that part of Ireland which the Queen hoped to reach in 2011 (a fact he acknowledged by playing no part in that visit, though I believe he had the chance to do so) . Those who might say that Bloody Sunday in 1972 played the same part in the modern troubles as 1916 did in the former ones do have a general point. But remember that Martin McGuinness was already committed to his cause well before Bloody Sunday, and needed no such event to harden his heart against the Crown.

AS to whether the visit could have taken place without the 1998 agreement, I know that I can say this five million times and some people will never hear me, but John Hume’s ‘Irish Dimension’, by which reconciliation could be achieved by moving towards reunification, was neither the only route towards justice for Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholic minority, nor was it the best.

I still say that more justice, and more lasting happiness, could have been achieved through the (now utterly lost and gone) path of enlightened direct rule, which removed forever any ability of the majority to bully or discriminate against the minority, and which removed the issue of sovereignty from the argument

Thus, under a UK parliament and normal county councils, all discrimination in housing, employment, law and justice, policing and education could have been removed, while the only ‘power-sharing’ would have been at local levels where it is in fact most important. Above all, this would have preserved the democratic, tolerant and non-violent political leaderships of both communities, instead of enthroning and rewarding men of violence or intolerant views. ‘Loyalists’ would have had nothing real to fear, and might have had to address the real problems of their communities. And the border would have gradually become a ghost, symbolically present for those who needed it for reassurance, actually absent for any practical purposes. I do not myself think the future of Ireland will be as kind as this. We have bought a present ‘peace’ of sorts, in return for strife in times to come.

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"It is true that, in bald terms, the British government was entitled to use considerable force to repress the Easter 1916 rising in Dublin, coming (as it did) at the height of the Great War, and being (as it was) aided and abetted by Imperial Germany."

I have heard this theory bandied about before, but I am still curious as to what the Germans actually did to aid the Irish rebels or foment an uprising in Ireland. It makes sense that they would have welcomed such a development, of course; and they were known to have played a role in helping Lenin re-infiltrate Russia. But what are the sources on this idea that Germany aided the Irish rebels in 1916? If any German officials of the era had come forward to reveal their role in the Irish question, I think I could take this idea more seriously. But if the only sources for this theory were the British government itself, I think I could safely regard this idea as having been more war-time propaganda.

Adams and McGuiness are no more than political pawns in a game of end justifies the means playing out on both sides of the Atlantic.
There are people who, as long as these two psychotic thugs and their cohorts are alive, will never forgive the indiscriminate bombings, killing and maiming of many innocent people both in Ireland and the UK just as they show no remorse for their actions.
So let's forget all this shall we and sweep it under the carpet?
These two monsters are just reminders of the many injustices in this world carried out in the name of religion or politics and greed.

I largely agree with your post. But I must correct you on one point. PH may be a reactionary, but he's not a 'free-market' reactionary. He believes in immigration controls. Which makes him a protectionist.

The flaw in Mr. Hitchens's analysis of the Irish question is that he consistently speaks of "Northern Ireland" as if it were a viable political entity worthy of preservation. In reality, it is a wholly artificial statelet created on the basis of a sectarian head-count designed to manufacture a Protestant majority and ensure the latter's political supremacy. As Mr. Hitchens grudgingly acknowledged, it doesn't even correspond to the historical province of Ulster. Is that not a crucial fact? Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan all contained notable Protestant communities at the time of partition, yet were not included in the six-county statelet. I wonder why.

Naturally, the identity of the Protestant loyalist population of "Northern Ireland" should be acknowledged, but should also be put in perspective: this population exists because they were deliberately and cynically planted there in the Elizabethan era following brutal dispossession and disenfranchisement of the native Roman Catholics. Also important to note is that the identity of this planted community expressed itself for a large part in asserting its supremacy vis-a-vis the displaced natives, most notably via provocative and triumphalist sectarian marches through majority Catholic areas.

As for the last two paragraphs, the question must be asked: why did this "enlightened direct rule" never manifest itself over the course of 800 years of Norman/British presence in Ireland? The Penal Laws spring to mind, as do the horrendous massacres by the New Model Army at Drogheda and Wexford. The catastrophic effects of the Famine were largely caused by the prevailing laissez-faire economic doctrines of the British state. Even after the Act of Union, many parts of Ireland - particularly Dublin - collapsed into prolonged periods of economic and cultural stagnation. When you tot up the balance sheet, the red ink overwhelmingly outweighs the black.

Irishman wrote "only country in the world with a smaller population than it had in the 19th century"

You have to take account of the famine and resulting emigration.

Im not sure what PH meant by "Enlightened direct rule" but the Act of Union in 1800 which dissolved our Parliament on Dame Street brought untold misery in Dublin. The rich people took their wealth out of Ireland, factories closed down and families became impoverished. There is a good account by Shelley the poet on this. (He visited Dublin in 1812 and 1813.

"Enlightened direct rule" under that free market reactionaries like Hitchens like is the sole reason Ireland is the only country in the world with a smaller population than it had in the 19th century. "Enlightened direct rule" left Dublin with the worst slums in Europe with biscuits and stout the only thing produced in any quantity in 1914.

It was the British army, not the RUC, that shot 26 Irish people on bloody Sunday. British law produced the Birmingham 6 and the Guildford 4.

Who does Peter Hitchens think he's fooling? The idea that the Irish people in occupied Ireland will ever see the entity to whose government they are subject as anything other than the colony it is is laughable as well he knows. Say what you will the Paisleyites, at least they do not masquerade their bigotry as the likes of Peter Hitchens does.

It is worth remembering that the execution of only 15 of the rebels, was, by the standards of the time, a magnanimous response.

Politically, it proved costly, just as refusal to accommodate the hunger strikers proved costly. But that certainly doesn't mean it was wrong. The mistake in both cases was in assuming Irish nationalism do be an essentially reasonable movement.

An excellent and moving article, Mr Hitchens. I fear that you are right and that the egregious Blair's craven surrender to Adams and McGuiness, under pressure from our cousins across the sea, is eventually going to have far reaching and terrible consequences on both islands.

'We have bought a present 'peace' of sorts in return for strife in times to come'.
Perhaps Irish born stoicism will find a way round it, if it does occur.

To have found a near as perfect solution, it would have needed to be created well into the first half of the nineteenth century ; if Ireland had had a 'power-sharing' government in Dublin with Westminster preferring not to 'interfere', the Roman Catholics would have almost unanimously accepted the Monarch as Head of State with probably minimal dissent in that arrangement from all sides. Purely academic observation now, of course.

I think Mr Hitchens is confusing willingness to use violence with militancy. Granted in an old-fashioned sense militant is a synonym for "fighting" but the idea that McGuinness represents hard-line republicanism or even hard-line nationalism is at odds with everything we know about him. By his own admission he didn't come from a Republican or nationalist family and was not political at all until the start of the troubles in Derry. Since he and Adams took control of the Republican Movement they have steered it gradually but relentlessly towards accommodation not only with the British state but with the EU and the rest of the globalist corporate establishment.

It's fitting that he should be among those present at Higgins' dinner with the Queen of England, since he played a crucial role in the elevation to the Presidency of that favourite of the Irish liberal classes. During a TV debate, and in conjunction with RTE, McGuinness made some absurd accusations of financial impropriety (later completely disproved) against the leading candidate for the Presidency. That episode saw this candidate's huge 15 point opinion poll lead mysteriously disappear literally overnight, on the eve of the election. Higgins was the beneficiary of this turnaround. If anything proved McGuinness's liberal "Dublin 4" credentials it was surely that performance.

By the way I've never been convinced by the modern Irish Revisionist line that the overwhelming majority of Dubliners strongly opposed the 1916 Rising. The evidence usually adduced is about as convincing as that given to support the claim that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supported the western coup in that country.

The Queen entertained Emperor Hirohito in the 1970s when many British people who had been lucky enough to survive his camps were still alive.They abhorred the visit but it still went ahead.Likewise Margaret Thatcher shook hands with Menechem Begin the dead of the King David Hotel just water under the bridge.General DeGaull described states as being cold monsters.Lord Palmerston said something similar when he said that Great Britain has no permanent friends or enemies only interests.Governments think coldly without emotion.However in war time emotion is whipped up against the enemy who is described as vermin,totally evil etc, Eventually yesterdays enemy may become today's ally.Governments have long forgotten the verbiage they used against them but the people can remain stubbornly off message

Peter Hitchens writes, “Anyway, the point about the 1916-22 conflict was that it was largely based on a very bad mistake by us, Britain - the executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising. It was perfectly reasonable (and mostly applauded by Dubliners) that we put down the rising itself with all necessary force. But the executions were (as Talleyrand said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duc D’Enghien in 1804) ‘ worse than a crime. They were a mistake’.”

But the leaders had tried to start a revolution through violence. It seems to me that such conduct ought to be punishable by the death penalty. Wasn't that treason? It was different than just a political demonstration. It seems to me that 90 is too many executions, but surely one or two of the primary conspirators deserved capital punishment.

Was it also a problem that the trials were courts martial and that the executions were performed by firing squad? I wonder if one or two hangings after civilian jury trials would have been more acceptable to the Irish people.

Your use of the expression, "militant Protestant loyalist", is as offensive as it is inaccurate.
Your use of the term, "Protestant" in this context is plain wrong. The type of person you have in mind when using this phrase may well regard themselves as Protestant but I am pretty confident that they would be using the word in the most casual manner. They are highly unlikely to have the remotest interest in Scripture. You really should never use the word "Protestant" in this sloppy manner.
Would you employ the expression, "Roman Catholic Republican terrorist"? I thought not.

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